


Of Valor

by turnitup



Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27943178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turnitup/pseuds/turnitup
Summary: He serves with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control his emotions and actions, regardless of circumstance, sets him apart from others. His character and honor are steadfast. His word is his bond.
Relationships: Scott Carter/Trent Sawyer
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24





	Of Valor

**Author's Note:**

> \- TRIGGER WARNING -  
> The following reading contains references to traumatic injury sustained in a combat environment. If this could be potentially triggering for you, please do not continue reading. 
> 
> Not Beta read - any mistakes are my own!

_Trent can never forget the dust._

_Each panting breath was hard, tongue thick in his mouth as he ducked through a shielded cave to protect his cargo against the barricade of shots that were being slung their way. Around him, the piercing sounds of gun shots ricocheted through the air, swiping through the hefty current._

_The dust covered everything._

_His eyes stung. He swiped an impatient hand over them as he rustled through his pack, working as fast as he could while ignoring the burn. His rifle felt cold and heavy, even with the blistering heat and several layers of uniform._

_Carlos, let out a gritted sound of agony as Trent rolled him from his stomach onto his side and cut his uniform away to take a better look at the hole in his lower limb. He’d been shot clean through and through the meat of his thigh, and thankfully there wasn’t a bullet to dig out in the field._

_Although they would never be that lucky. The bullet had nicked his femoral artery, the main blood vessel that provided major blood supply to the thigh and leg. The blood soaked through the surrounding fabric too, rushing too fast for it to properly clot. He’d have to plug it._

_The thing about being a medic in a warzone was that you couldn’t afford three seconds to think about what to do next; you only had the time and sense to make one decision and pray it was the right one. Trent had no time to think, no time to consult or reference, not when he could feel enemy combatants closing in across the god forsaken dessert. If it came to it, he’d have to leave Carlos to defend the post._

_“Just do it, T.” Carlos’ teeth were clenched tightly. Trent’s fingers worked quickly and steadily to pull out gauze from the pack. He quickly pressed a cloth to Carlos’ mouth to keep him silent as he pushed the gauze into the wound._

_The entire thing probably didn’t take more than thirty seconds, but they were thirty seconds that would keep him company every night for the next year. He could hear Carlos’ muffled screams of pain echo through the cave but Trent persisted._

_They’d had been friends since boot camp. They’d enlisted together, trained together, got posted together and re-enlisted together. Now here the pair of them were, Trent trying his best to save his best friend. Plugging the wound was the only option they had to make sure he didn’t develop an infection that’d lead to amputation._

_“Listen, if I don’t...there’s a letter in my bunk. For Maddie..” Carlos’ words were ragged with pain but they were determined. He forced Trent to look at him, the latter only now realizing that his vision had blurred from tears._

_“You’re going to make it, asshole.”_

_As Carlos coughed, Trent furrowed his eyebrows at the blood dripping from his mouth._

_“Wait-” He turned the rest of Carlos’ body so the man was lying on his back, only to note with a dreadful sinking that there was a bullet stuck in his chest wall as well, the red wetness having been concealed by the brown dust that caked them. “How did I not-”_

_“This isn’t your fault.” Carlos said weakly, holding up his hand. Trent’s vision tunneled with rage and panic as he realized that his friend had kept his hand placed over the injury. He’d been hiding the wound from him and because there was no exit wound, the spread of blood wasn’t as noticeable as the one in his thigh._

_Are you fucking insane?” Trent barked, already moving to do something about it. Tweezers, patches, disinfectants, anything._

_“It punctured my lung, T. We both know you can’t fix this one. Not with those assholes closing in on us.” The two men kept their voices at a whisper but sweat dripped down Trent’s spine once he heard footsteps that sounded far too close for comfort. “You need to stop them from coming in here; I don’t want to die not being able to defend myself against them. Please, Trent.”_

_They had run out of time._

_“God Damnnit Reyes. You better keep fighting brother.”_

_With a long line of curses and his heart pounding faster in his chest, Trent gripped his rifle tight and pushed away from his friend. He inched along the back of the wall, Carlos’ laboured breathing echoing loudly in his mind._

_He'd hardly taken two steps when he jumps and his whole world explodes. Pain and heat and flashes of light._

* * *

“Thank you for your service, Petty Officer First Class Sawyer.”

It was obvious that Trent had been dreading attending the award ceremony for the entire time he had known about it. He had been uncharacteristically flighty – avoiding the team, avoiding Metal, avoiding conversations - hitting the gym too hard and sleeping too little. 

No one becomes a SEAL for the recognition. You become a SEAL to guard and defend those who are unable to defend themselves. Metal knew that receiving a commendation for actions that led to mission success but the death of a brother would be near impossible to accept. He was the consummate stoic sailor on stage but Metal could see through the façade.

When they get home, he pulls Trent back to the bedroom. He wants Trent to feel as comfortable as he can, to feel as safe as he can. And even though Trent has never—would never—tell Metal that the place to achieve that is in Metal’s space, Metal has been studying Trent’s body for months, every little twitch and turn that he can. Metal knows the lines of Trent, even when he’s clothed. He knows the only place he ever _sometimes_ sees his constant tension falter is when Trent’s right here: in their apartment, in their room, and on their bed. He gets the smaller man roughly into the center, chasing him with lips and tongue, languid and loose like he doesn’t have an ulterior agenda. Metal keeps the lamp by the bed on. It’s a softer light than the overhead, a warmer bulb that contrasts with the deep blue of the sheets: A combination of color temperatures that Metal just knows will make Trent glow.

Metal noses at the crook of Trent’s neck, tonguing at his pulse point. He keeps up the gentle pressure of his mouth on Trent’s throat. He waits until the coiled muscles under his begin to soften as Trent relaxes further into the bed. Trent’s entire body has always been sensitive, but Metal knows the exact spot right below his ear that makes his body sing. He sucks his lips around the spot in a consistent soft and steady rhythm and waits. He waits until Trent’s fingers dig into the sheets, until his pulse and then his breath quickens into something dizzy and frenetic. He waits until Trent whimpers from the stimulation and begins to push his hips upwards to blindly seek out more. He waits until Trent’s desperate.

“I want to see you,” Metal says it soft this time, a little pleading. And maybe it’s the soft edges, that he’s let himself be vulnerable and sound vulnerable, that has Trent responding differently. He still shakes his head, but his words are softer too.

“Scott...” Trent stops there a moment, caught up on the name. It’s not entirely unheard of, but still not commonplace, to vocalize that level of intimacy between them. And it’s amusing, and ironic, and a little bit sad—if not entirely devastating—that somehow Trent is so utterly comfortable with having everything of Metal’s in his mouth except his first name.

Metal savors the sound of it for a moment. He likes it, he really likes it: the way Trent’s teeth come to rest on the swell of his lip. Metal lets it drive him. He pulls back so that he can see Trent’s face before he takes a deep breath and asks it: the question they had once silently agreed never to breech, “Why don’t you want me to see you?”

There’s a range of ways Trent can answer, and Metal has prepared himself for those options. And yet, the answer still surprises him. As does Trent’s tone, which comes out matter-of-fact, like that’s just the way it is, and he’s accepted that. Metal’s so surprised, he has to ask Trent to repeat it. And Trent sighs, looks him in the eye and says again, “You shouldn’t have to.”

“What? I mean, I heard you, but what does that mean?” Metal keeps his voice gentle. This thing between them, whatever is happening, feels so fragile. One wrong breath and it could shatter and break.

There’s something about Trent today. Maybe it’s that he’s been able to stand straight this whole week, seven days of clear inhales and clean skin. Maybe it’s one of those rare moments that he isn't as distracted by the containment of his discomfort, so that he can more fully focus on something external, has more patience for it. But Trent actually answers, not looking at Metal exactly, but he also isn’t turning away. “It isn’t pretty, Metal. It’s…. It just isn’t pretty, okay? You don’t want to see it.”

Metal tries not to react to that, because seeing Trent’s body is exactly what he does want, and the slowly forming full image of how Trent must see himself now—as something not worthy of being seen—guts Metal to his core. “I didn’t say I wanted to see it, I want to see you—all of you.” Metal knows he has to be careful here, so very very careful.

“Why?” Trent doesn’t seem like he believes him, but he does at least sound curious, even if it’s a little confrontational.

Metal smiles, something small, soft, and genuine, “There are so many answers to that question.”

Trent looks like he doubts that, “Pick one.”

Metal never used to wear his emotions open for all to see. He too had grown up callous and behind plenty of his own walls. He had always just taken and not cared what it cost him or the others around him. And then he had felt something for someone once and told them, only to have those feelings and words ripped apart. Metal hadn’t wanted to ever share himself like that again, to say what he was feeling and what he wanted, not knowing if it would, or even could, ever be returned. But he was asking for something huge from Trent, and he knew he had to give something in exchange for that. Overcoming his own smaller scars for the sake of Trent’s seemed like a start, so Metal didn’t just pick one. He tells Trent everything, what he feels and what he wants. Metal looks at Trent while he says it, everything he’s been wanting to tell him, even though he’s terrified of what Trent will do with it.

“You should see yourself in your blues. You’re so fucking beautiful that it kind of hurts. Every single part of you that I’ve seen is, and I’m positive I’m not going to change my mind on that. Because I want to touch you and I want you to touch me. I want to feel your body on mine, like really against me. I want to be closer to you-- and I also just want more of you. I want to really know you. This you. And I’m not sure that can really happen completely without you letting me in. And I want you to let me in. I want to be here with you. Whatever you’re hiding, whatever you’re so afraid for me to see, it’s a part of you,” Metal takes an inhale, a shaky fortification before he admits, “And I still want all of you, I really do.”

Trent looks almost betrayed by Metal’s words, like he’s convinced that Metal’s joking, mocking or pranking him. The mixture of confusion and disbelief on Trent’s face suggests that no one has ever said anything remotely like that to him before. And yeah, Metal has never said anything like that to anyone before either; it feels too heavy and saccharine, and a little surreal. It has to be real though, because he feels raw and over-exposed. But he pushes through it, goes in for Trent’s lips, parted slightly out of shock, and kisses him. His lips are soft. And unlike the rest of Trent, they open easily to let Metal in. Metal flutters his fingers down the slight inward curve of Trent’s side, going slow, like Trent’s body is something that needs to be tamed and domesticated before it flees. Metal makes it to the waist of Trent’s jeans and stops, curving his palm around the hard swell of his hip.

“Please, Trent.” Metal says as he touches his fingers to the bottom of Trent’s shirt, “Can I see you? Will you show me?” Once again, Metal waits. He knows this is the moment that Trent either lets him in or kicks him out, and that if Trent chooses the later, that he won’t ever let Metal back in. But it’s Metal that’s pushed, that’s brought them here, so he’ll have to live with whatever Trent decides. Metal can see the conflict flicker through him, how truly hard it is for Trent to give him this. That he really does seem raw and afraid of everything around him, that he might be just as afraid to go back home alone.

Metal waits, thumb stroking the inch of skin at Trent’s hip where his shirt had ridden up, tracing what he can see of the old bullet graze scar there, shining pale and silver in the light. Trent watches the movement of Metal’s thumb, looking panicked and ill, and Metal follows the first compulsion that washes over him. He slowly bends forward and places his lips on the scar, kisses it just once, soft, deliberate, before he goes back to waiting. Metal rests the bridge of his nose against the curve of Trent’s hip. His forehead lands pressed right against the raised ridge of skin, and he waits. It feels like something reverent, something sacred and holy, to prostrate his body at the wicked alter that is Trent’s broken and beautiful flesh. Metal can feel the hot heat of it on his face, right where their skin touches; it burns.

Trent breathes, three deep breaths, then swallows, then nods, “Ok.”

“You sure?” Metal doesn’t want to give Trent even a moment to change his mind, but he offers it anyway.

Trent doesn’t say it again. He’s always been better with the physical things than with talking anyway, so it’s fitting that he takes his hand instead and puts it by Metal’s head. It takes a moment for Metal to work out what Trent’s doing, but then Trent’s fingers are curling into his shirt and pulling the fabric up. Metal waits frozen in awe and anticipation as Trent bares the rest of his hip, and keeps going: past his stomach, his chest, his neck, his arms, until the shirt is fully off and over his head and Trent’s skin from the waist up is stretched out and completely naked before him.

Metal has seen Trent’s torso before: in motion at the gym, in the wet of the shower, in the moonlight of the desert, and in shadowed contours on his bed. But this is the first time since the injury that he gets to see the whole thing up close, spread out right in front of his face, inches from his tongue. And god, yeah. Trent’s just as gorgeous up close as Metal remembered he was, more so even. Sculpted lines of muscle cut deep into his skin, tan, and long, and thick. The ridges of his abdominals alone is enough to make Metal ache.

Metal makes a sound he knows he’s never made before. It’s reverent and desperate and feels like it was ripped from some deep part of his soul. “God, Trent—Baby—” Metal can’t help it, he touches his lips to skin. It’s beautiful—Trent’s beautiful—and Metal tells him that over and over again as he breathes in deep, inhales the smell of him.

Metal unzips the clasp of his slacks, just to find some relief, before pressing himself against Trent’s thigh, lets him feel it, how hard he is just from the sight alone. “Fuck, I knew you were hot babe, but fuck, you’re gorgeous. Can you feel me? Can you feel how hard I am right now? I haven’t even touched you yet. Just the sight of you.” Metal groans low, deep, needing something, everything, “Cut like a fucking god.”

At the feel of the length of Metal against his thigh, Trent moans. Because that’s what Trent always does whenever Metal’s dick touches him, and Metal loves that about him. That even on the verge of panic and collapse, Metal can still make Trent go slack with need at the mere implication that Metal wants to get his cock into him. And god, yeah, does Metal ever want to get his cock into the sinfully hard body spread out in front of him. But Metal is also not about to rush through the first time he finally gets to see Trent. He’s determined to take this slow, to make it about Trent and the long-awaited luxury of taking him all in.

Metal kisses him slow, starting right where he already is at the silver-white crescent of a scar on his hip, tracing and tracking the cruel and curious line of it all the way up his side. When the scar reaches its final end, Metal maps his way through the rest of Trent’s torso with his tongue, chasing the wet trail with his fingers and eyes. There are three more scars on his chest that match the first in the way the knots of them shine, but they vary in length, placement, and age. Old wounds that had stretched and strained themselves as far as they could to close back together wherever the skin had hit and split too far open, perhaps in a fall, catching corners on the way down, or just from a wrong-angled force.

From up this close, other softer marks are visible. Including all the individual thinner faint pink slashes that spread randomly in haphazard patterns over the planes of Trent’s chest and the the dips of his sides in smaller fading lines, places where shrapnel had embedded, with sutures that hadn’t fully healed. Metal knows how much Trent hates hospitals and has a hard time trusting other medics, which means he must do his own stitches when he needs them. He does pretty clean work, all things considered; Trent has a fairly practiced hand. But the places that would be harder for him to reach, such as the one up close to the base of his armpit on the right-hand side, carry the evidence of their more difficult angles by their more jagged, less surgical appearance. It makes Metal’s own chest ache, somewhere deep inside him, to think of Trent alone in his room: sitting carefully on the carpet in front of his mirror behind the door, or maybe under the harsh artificial light of the bathroom, trying to twist his tenderized torso enough to stick the sharp bite of a needle and thread over and over again into another fresh round of pain.

Metal searches out all the fresh, faded, and ghostly imprints of each one he can find and kisses every single one of them. He pays particular attention to one of the oldest suture scars that slants, thin but long, across his left pectoral muscle, lavishing his tongue over Trent’s chest with deliberate swirls around the peak of Trent’s nipple located right above the scar. It's an area that Metal already knows is another sensitive one for Trent—in theory. Trent had always responded to Metal touching him there in the past, be it directly with deft fingers, or by in-directly brushing against Trent’s chest with his own. But that had always been while Trent had still been armored in layers of clothes. The electric jolt of Metal’s tongue on Trent’s bare skin is galvanizing. When Metal latches his lips over the nerves, dormant but alive beneath the scar tissue, Trent seizes upwards into Metal’s mouth, his torso curling around Metal’s head as he shouts, something frantic and pure with pleasure. The sound of it vibrates through the room, takes root in Metal’s own body as something whole and holy.

From the look on his face, Trent seems just as shocked by it. And it dawns on Metal that Trent has maybe never actually been touched like this before. Not this intimately and up close. If Trent has always been this protective and shy about his body, it’s possible, even likely, that Trent has maybe never let another person see him this completely stripped down. And Metal is suddenly so overwhelmingly grateful that Trent has given him this, has let him in. “Fuck, Trent,” Metal breathes against him, feels—and sees—the shiver that runs through Trent as he feels the warmth of Metal’s breath brush over the wet trail Metal had left with his lips. “Babe, Trent” Metal repeats, absolutely awed by the sensitivity, and that Trent was letting Metal see it, is letting Metal be there with him as Trent experiences the raw, bare touch of another person. That Metal gets to be that person. “God.”

Trent’s breath audibly catches at the sounds of his name, like he’s trying to reign in the volume of his own heavy breathing so that he doesn’t miss the soft syllables on Metal’s tongue. Now that he thinks about it, Metal probably hasn’t used Trent’s first name in front of him any more than Trent’s used his. Metal gives it to him now. It slips off his tongue, rolling over and through the muscle like a mantra, a prayer.

Metal slides himself up against Trent’s side, nudges him with his palms and his lips until Trent is coaxed to lay propped on his other side so that Metal can slot in behind him. Metal mouths over the skin there too, whispers Trent’s name to him over and over as the fading but still red recent skin grafts. Metal tells him he’s beautiful, and then he tells him again. Trent arches back against him and Metal presses back harder, lines their hips up so that Trent can feel the weight of him pressed against the curve of his ass, how painfully hard Metal still is, how much he wants him, how utterly and completely true his words are.

Trent feels it, all of it, Metal can tell by the way Trent chokes out Metal’s name as he bends and twists his spine, trying to find an angle that will press Metal’s cock harder against him without sacrificing the touch of his bare back to Metal’s chest. Metal helps him find it, curling his body around Trent’s, maintaining the contact of his skin all the way down. Trent's fingers remain where they’ve been the whole time, twisted in Metal’s sheets, in a determined attempt to keep himself open for Metal to explore. Metal places a kiss to the spinal ridges on Trent’s neck as he walks his fingers down the front of his chest, deftly unzips Trent’s slacks and helps him get them down.

Despite Trent’s self-conscious hesitancy to let Metal explore, Trent is solid and hard under his pants. Once free, his cock strains upwards into Metal’s hand as Metal wraps it around him, fisting and stroking the fat length of his gorgeous fucking cock as Trent’s body bucks and melts against him. Metal keeps his body molded to Trent’s, rocking against him, building friction, until Trent’s moans turn heady, until the pressure building in his own body turns bright. When Metal hooks his chin over the crook of Trent’s neck to see, it reminds him of their first night together, how little he knew then, but how close they still felt. He feels even closer now, curled skin-to-skin around him, Trent’s neck expanded up and back to give Metal access—to have Trent both open and vulnerable and yet still be able to feel Trent’s urgent need for Metal to be right there, his cock leaking down Metal’s fingers and over his wrist.

Metal finds that he wants to give Trent what he needs, anything and everything that might be. So he keeps his right hand where it is with steady strokes as Trent rocks against his palm. The other he keeps moving, flitting over Trent’s chest, across his thighs. Trent’s body is covered in remnants of his fight, of his sacrifice. Metal catalogues and memorizes everything, because this is Trent’s temple, and he wants it, wants to know it, every surface part and then below that, straight to the very core. He finds and traces over them all in reverent, gentle strokes, just enough pressure so that Trent can feel the touch: The slices that run down his sides, the grafts on his arm, the mottled burns on his chest. The nicks and scratches on his shoulder from shattered glass, the way his elbow clicks from a bad reset; the jagged cut above his knee in the angry circular shape of a bottle, and the misshapen gleam of a hot iron just left of his spine.

Trent has stitches and breaks, contusions and patches that have been exposed to too much heat until they burned, but it’s the smallest scab that fills Metal with fear, an overwhelming spike of adrenaline that washes through him until he’s clutching at Trent tighter than he should. It’s such a small line, slightly concave at the base of his throat, that gets caught just right between Metal’s angle and the light. Such a small innocuous seeming mark, but Metal knows too well the remnant imprint of a tracheotomy scar. Metal wraps his hand around Trent’s throat, his thumb pressed over the mark to feel it. The mark that tells Metal that one grenade had almost taken Trent from him. He had been trached, his throat slit and punctured open to give him an alternative means to breathe.

The thought is a hard one for Metal to swallow. It pulls achingly at Metal’s chest, but not enough to cover up the need pulsating through the rest of him. If anything it fuels it, makes Trent even more beautiful and precious because he’s here. Despite all the forces that have tried to take him under and down, Trent has always been a fighter, a survivor. And Metal is so grateful for that. He needs for him to be, because at some point, some unknown line was crossed and Metal just needs him, and he needs Trent alive and strong for that to happen; he needs him to keep on fighting.

The whole thing pulls at Metal so acutely that all his thoughts begin to pour out of him. He’s speaking before he knows it as he thrusts harder against the curve of Trent’s body, slips his own wet-slick cock between the warm, smooth press of Trent’s thighs to chase the friction, “I see you. I see all of you. and fuck, Trent. You’re so fucking beautiful. I thought it the first time I saw you, and I still think it now. Even more than I did before. You’re strong and you survived. I already knew you were built, that you had all these insane muscles and that you were strong, but those aren’t what makes you as strong as you are after all…. these are. And, yeah, that’s fucking sexy. Everything about you is, Trent, everything. Makes me want to draw you. Show everyone how beautiful you are.”

Trent chokes on a moan, eyelashes fluttering as he pushes up to meet him, angles his ass so that Metal’s cock slots just right to catch and rub against the base of it as Metal thrusts between and through his legs. They’ve never done this either. There's something dirty, and wet, and beautiful in being so close but not quite. About the way Trent chases it, is forced to keep the sensations focused on the surface. Making Trent feel all the ways they could find pleasure from his whole body now that he’s offered it.

Metal goes back in for the spot on Trent’s throat, delighting in the way it makes the body pressed against him quiver. The response emboldens Metal, feeling high with the endorphins, the unfiltered pleasure of it taking over, “I’m so lucky, Trent. This body of yours, it’s mine too, yeah? I want it to be. It is right? Tell me I can have it. That I can keep you. Tell me that you’re mine,” Metal pleads, unsure if it’s a demand or if he’s begging.

Trent groans, hands twisting in the sheet until the knuckles turn white, “Yes, Yeah Scott. I am. Fuck, You know that I am.”

“Tell me that your beautiful.”

“Scott..”

It comes out as a whine, but it’s not a refusal, so Metal pushes him.

“Scott,” Trent repeats, but his voice keeps getting stuck, caught tight in his throat.

If there’s one thing that will always get Trent to get out of his head and into the moment, it’s sex, and Metal knows that, uses it, “Tell me, Trent. Say it and I’ll fuck you faster,” he promises with a whisper, “Make me believe it and I’ll let you come.”

“Fuck, I …,” Trent tries and Metal waits, slowing all his movements to an excruciating pace, letting his fingers dance and skim over the head of Trent’s cock on the precipice of the next down stroke. Trent hisses, tries to jerk his hips forward into the evasive friction without loosing the wet slow drag of Metal’s cock from between his inner thighs, “I’m yours and…”

“And what, sweetheart, come on, you can tell me.”

Trent shudders at the endearment, spine arching as something in him breaks, “beautiful... I’m beautiful and yours and you’re mine,” Trent gets out in a rush; he blushes, flushes red, embarrassed, and yeah, that’s a good look on him too.

“Yeah you are,” Metal affirms for him. “God, Trent, you really really are.”

Metal had promised, so he complies, speeding everything up until Trent is shouting his name, his own hands forgetting the sheets to reach back and grab for Metal, any part of him that he can reach. Metal’s own hips stutter as he comes first, his free hand clutching onto Trent’s chest as the prolonged sensation crests and pulses through him, riding the blinding spark of it as he pulls Trent in, tight and secure. In his haze, Metal feels Trent seize up against him, watches as Trent shakes with convulsive little jerks of his hips as Trent quickly follows him over, spilling warm and wet over Metal’s fist to the feeling of Metal’s orgasm spilling between his thighs.

With Trent still panting and shivering through the aftershocks, Metal pulls him in impossibly closer and crooks his head around, presses his forehead to Trent’s temple, doesn’t even think before he says, “I love you.” Metal didn’t mean to say it. He never has, not to Trent; there was a time, not too long ago, that he wasn’t even sure he would ever say it again. But he means it, feels it more strongly in this moment than he ever has before. Suddenly understands the difference between love and bullshit: This need he feels to know Trent completely, to take all the things Trent sees as flaws and love them too. Its overwhelming and Metal needs to say it. He needs for Trent to hear it. To believe it.

Trent shifts his face away from Metal, turning closer in towards the mattress so that Metal can no longer see it. The corner of Trent’s eyes look wet, but he stays silent.

The silence expands around them the longer Trent remains curled into the comforter and Metal feels suddenly self-conscious, as naked and raw as Trent had been moments before. Trent snorts, it’s a wet sound, a little gross, and totally Trent, and fuck if Metal doesn’t love that about him too. “Don’t get soft on me now, Alpha-1,” Trent says finally, still facing the sheets.

It’s nothing Metal hasn’t heard from Trent before, but his heart sinks a bit as he untangles himself from Trent’s back to pull away, suddenly feeling too close and exposed now that the haze and endorphins of the sex high aren’t there to give him the confidence. He moves to stand up from the bed, to give Trent space, but Trent’s sudden hand on his arm stops him and Metal stills. He looks back down at Trent, watching as Trent wipes at his face before turning back towards him, swallows, breathes in deep. That look of raw vulnerability flashes through Trent again, but it’s chased by a determined resolve, and Metal waits for Trent to find the words for whatever he wants to say. As always, there’s a range of things Trent could tell him and Metal prepares for them all, maybe that they need to forget what just happened, or that Metal is still just bullshit—that no one could ever love him.

The hand on Metal’s arm squeezes once, gently, pulling Metal’s focus to it. From there Trent slides his hand down the length of Metal’s arm to his hand, twists their fingers together. Metal stares at their tangle of skin, transfixed, watches in further surprise when Trent pulls their hands up to his lips, places a kiss to each one of Metal’s knuckles with a soft open mouth. Metal makes a softer, surprised sound and Trent’s eyes flick up, latching onto his with a look, and then a voice, that’s steady and serious, “I love you too, Scott.”

Relief crashes over him, and Metal exhales, breaks into a smile, “You’re such a fucking asshole.”

“I thought you said I was beautiful,” Trent replies slyly, the soft challenging tease in Trent’s voice slowly filtering back in—the Trent that Metal knows who likes to push coming back to him, but with a warmer, more welcoming heat.

Metal can’t seem to stop smiling as he curls back over Trent, bending in to press his lips to Trent’s as Trent pulls him in, opens and spreads his body to let Metal settle over him, “Oh believe me, you can be both.”

Trent pulls his head back just enough to catch Metal’s eyes again. “I believe you,” Trent says, softly, but it sounds true.

The next time they come home from a spin, from deployment, Trent still has his scars. And that’s the thing with scars, he always will. Trent carries his whole life with him, mapped across his body. He can never let it go and become someone else, or at least, he can never become someone entirely new.

But that next time, for the first time, when Metal reaches out to shut off the warm glow of the overhead lights, Trent catches his wrist. He leads Metal’s fingers to wrap around the bottom hem of his shirt instead, eyes still a little shy, but holding Metal’s steady as he whispers, “Leave them on.” Metal’s heart soars; his grin spreading rapid and bright as he helps Trent slip out of everything but his skin. Metal quickly follows, the full flesh of them both finally coming together under the light.

Metal knows that Trent isn’t somehow suddenly cured. Trent still has his scars. He still has subconscious flashes, forgotten moments where he flinches or hides on reflex; he’s still hesitant to show Metal any of the immediate aftermaths of their violent jobs and he still turns his face away into the bed for any of the much rarer moments when he cries.

Not all of Trent’s scars are visible—disembodied marks cut far too deeply into the soul below his skin for Metal to be able to simply kiss and soothe away. But Trent’s still warm and solid beneath Metal’s hands; beautiful and alive beneath his gaze. And Metal knows demons and monsters: how much easier they are to fight when you don’t have to do it alone. Trent isn’t alone, not anymore, and Metal is determined to ensure that he never will be again. Trent has always been a fighter, and so has Metal. Trent’s not cured, but he’s better; he’s fighting through it—surviving. Trent will always have his scars, but it’s a start, a tangible and visual proof:

There are still parts of him that can heal.


End file.
